I was just saying to someone yesterday that I accidentally wrote a book once.

I have to add an experience from Stephen Bussey @sb8244, author of Real-Time Phoenix #book-real-time-phoenix who has a blog post about his journey to becoming an author.

Takeaways:

• Don’t be discouraged if your initial proposal doesn’t fly.
• Focus the proposal (and book) on what readers can do. Talk about the problems they can solve, and not the technology itself.
• Set small writing goals (like a subsection instead of an entire chapter).
• Establish a pattern for your writing to follow: introduce the topic, present the meat, wrap it up.
• Watch out for burnout; find ways to get reinvigorated about the topic (Webinars, conferences).
• What you decide not to include is important too.
• Be prepared for mental challenges: allow yourself to enjoy other parts of your life without guilt about not writing.

Steve has much more to say, and if you are curious about what it is like to write a book, his insight is fresh, so check it out.

Thanks for sharing Margaret - I am sure these will help budding authors. I love the PragProg spotlights too

Congrats on setting up and running http://edocdesign.com as well!

Great mission statement:

…our main mission is to help you transition from a paper-based office or home to an electronic, multi-media environment.

I love my Kindle and I really appreciate books that are written with e-readers in mind. In fact this is something I’d love to ask all authors consider when writing; please make your books e-reader friendly. My review of the Ecto book explains what I mean in more detail: Programming Ecto (Pragprog) - #40 by AstonJ - Books - Elixir Programming Language Forum